


By the Need of Things to be Better

by classics_above_classics



Series: Alice Dorothy and Stories Set Elsewhere [21]
Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Memory Loss, Mild Amnesia, Starving Spaces, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/classics_above_classics/pseuds/classics_above_classics
Summary: It is cold, in Winter. But there is nowhere colder than the place she is in.(Found, found, found--)
Series: Alice Dorothy and Stories Set Elsewhere [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1363462
Kudos: 11





	By the Need of Things to be Better

Cold. Cold. It is far, far too cold.

She doesn't know why, but she's shaking, shivering, her fingers scrabbling uselessly against hard, cold soil. Cold, cold, always with the cold. Why is she so cold?

_(Distantly, she remembers a wrong turn made, the sight of a blindingly white landscape. Whoever she is, whatever she is, she hates, hates, hates white.)_

_(And that-- that makes her pause. Whoever she is? No, no, she's someone. She has to be. She's someone, someone important, someone who matters. She has to be someone. She has to be.)_

_(Her name is Lento, Lyric-Weaver, Girl-Who-Plays-A-Thousand-Things.)_

_(Her name is--)_

_(Her Name is--!)_

She screams, her voice echoing helplessly in the blinding, hollowing white. Her stomach hurts. Her stomach screams. Empty, empty, everything of her is--

Everything is so empty.

There's a memory in her mind that she keeps grasping at, keeps wanting, a memory of a bright, warm place full of colour and life. Something more than this endless cold. Sometimes, there are people there, a woman with curls in the same light brown as hers or a man with the same angled cheekbones or a girl a little younger than her with dark hair in a bun and a pair of glasses she swears are the palest shade of pink. She remembers salt and fairy rings and iron.

She doesn't remember those people's names. Should she remember? She doesn't know. All she knows she remembers is the dream of the fey. Salt, fairy rings, iron.

Sometimes, she wishes she'd held on to more of it. Would iron stop this cold?

She knows almost undoubtedly that it would not. But she hopes, and that is enough.

_(It isn't enough. Not with this aching emptiness, with the hollowness in her mouth and her throat. She needs... something. Something warm, something human--)_

_(She needs the human now more than ever. And yet here there is none to be found.)_

The girl, nameless-- _(Nameless?)_ \-- can only hope. And that is nowhere near enough for this cold. She can feel the snow wearing away at her thoughts, at the memory of everything outside. The thought of losing that makes her want to scream louder, until someone, anyone, lets her out. Does she want to remember the outside? That is the only question she can answer now, and the answer is a burning _yes._

She used to know so much. _How the mighty have fallen_ , a part of her sneers, a part that makes her think of the forest bare in Winter. What does she remember now? What fey words, what human ingenuity, what _life_ does she still hold in her memories?

The girl who cannot remember a name sobs. There is no memory she can dare to hold. Her tears freeze on the pale skin of her cheeks before they can fall.

_(Lento. Lento. The name is fading. She holds on faster to it.)_

_(Because some part of her knows, more than it knows anything in this place, that this ice destroys fastest what she tries the hardest to remember. And so she tries to remember a false name.)_

_(It is, perhaps, the best thing to remember. Better to lose this than anything true.)_

⋈

The starving space, Lyric-Weaver thinks to themself, is too cold on every level.

They don't quite know yet whether they can say they want the girl Lento to be here. Oh, they know instinctively how they _feel_ about it, of course-- they recoil from even the idea of finding another of Elsewhere's alumni here-- but they cannot bring themself to say it out loud. Even that girl, who was to be torn apart... they do not know if they could bear to see her in this biting cold.

Beside them, Ban is shivering, the black of their thick, feathered cloak standing out sorely in the snow. He isn't entirely black, Lyric-Weaver notes, looking over their companion with a searching eye that they don't think they could avoid. There are flecks of Autumn orange in the dark of his eyes, the faintest strokes of yellow and red under or within his feathers. He looks like a lit coal in Winter. Or perhaps a dying one. They aren't quite sure which comparison is best. They hope it is the first.

"Fuck," the crow-boy curses coarsely. " _Fuck_ , is it cold."

"I have to echo that sentiment," Lyric-Weaver quips, turning their attention to the landscape around them. "If it is anything here, it is cold."

By the way Ban laughs and steps closer to them to soak in their sun-bright warmth, they know that cannot be the only thing this space is. But they avert their eyes from his lost, almost hesitant expression and they do not ask.

They take their first step in this space and their foot sinks almost entirely under the snow. It must be at least a foot or two deep, easily enough to hide a body should it be face-down on the ground. Lyric-Weaver wonders, faintly, how many people must have starved here. How many students. They think of Connor's bright eyes dulled with hunger and suppress a tiny shudder.

If there is one thing that does not make them shiver, it is the cold. But this place sends a chill down their spine anyway.

"Do you really think she will be here?" Ban asks, reaching out to grab their sleeve like a child afraid of losing his mother. Lyric-Weaver very distinctly does not inform him of this comparison. "Who's to say your girl hasn't already been taken by some Court? Summer and Spring do like their humans. And if I'm being honest, she's certainly offended enough fae to draw their ire. A lot of those fae would love to have her as some sort of toy as revenge."

"But she is not in Summer." Spring, possibly, they haven't yet searched Spring, but Lyric-Weaver cannot entirely believe that Lento is in Spring. That girl was not Spring. Autumn or Winter, perhaps, fey enough that she's clearly of a colder Court, but not the snowmelt of Spring. "I... I do not know why, but I cannot help but feel that she is in Winter now. Autumn or Winter."

"And she was not in Autumn."

"She was not."

No. So she must be in Winter. It is the way of things.

Carefully, hesitantly, Lyric-Weaver reaches forward, reaches out with the searching magic that they used in Summer and Autumn. It is muted here, under all this snow, but it works.

There are beats here, heartbeats, human and fae. They are faraway, slower than they should be; it is a combination that churns Lyric-Weaver's stomach. There are so many. Too many.

And there is one.

Lyric-Weaver feels their leaves prick up, feels their branches and her awareness bristle at the sound. They know that beat. They've been playing it in their mind, over and over, until they can echo every last refrain.

"Come with me," they command sharply, grabbing Ban by the arm and following that thrice-damned beat.

They came to search for a lost girl. They've found her.

⋈

Someone grabs her shoulder roughly.

The girl with no name looks up. Confusion fills her a second before it is hollowed away. She does not know anyone who would come for her. She does not know why they would. For a second, she thinks it is the girl, the one who she can't quite remember, but that thought is proved wrong the moment she sees them.

The new arrival looks like her.

"You're coming with me," the _(fae?)_ says, taking her by the wrist and pulling her up. The world shifts around them.

And as this happens, all the girl _(not Lento)_ thinks that it is almost unbearably warm.


End file.
